Step 5: Adding Widgets (lll)

 Commonly used visitor tracking widgets 
  Visitor tracking widgets are popular on class blog because:

• Knowing you are writing for a global audience is incredibly motivating for students.
• Realizing people from other countries are reading what has been written increases students’ interest and excitement. This can motive students to blog.
• It also provides built-in geography lessons — many students constantly check for new visitors and enjoy finding out more about the countries where their visitors are from.

 Here’s  a quick overview of the most commonly used visitor tracking widgets on class blogs:
ClustrMaps: ClustrMaps is a thumbnail hit counter map widget that shows the geographical location of all visitors to your blog. Number of visitors from a location is indicated by the relative size of the dot.
Flag Counter: Flag Counter widget shows the total number of visitors from each country next to the country’s flag. Every time someone from a new country visits your site, a new flag will be added to your Counter. Clicking on the flag counter takes you to your flag counter page which provides more detailed charts and information about your visitors.
Revolver Map: Revolver Map displays all visitor locations and recent hits live and in realtime on a revolving globe of the Earth. A click on the widget opens the live statistics page.Visitor tracking
Link Widgets on class blogs
 Link widgets are commonly used on a class blog to provide links to other class blogs, student blogs, and resources— they are designed to help you, your students, and other readers.
 Traditionally, the most common type of link widget you will hear mentioned is a blogroll. Bloggers commonly use blogrolls to list their favorite blogs. Blogrolls help readers locate other blogs worth reading — you are saying, “These are some blogs I like which are worth checking out!”.
 Blogrolls on class blogs are used to provide often links to student blogs, other class blogs they interact with, or resources.
Note: please, if you are using the ‘My Class tool’, you add links to your student blogs by adding the Class Blogs Widget to your sidebar. You don’t have to add each student blog individually. You can read about managing student blogs using ‘ My Class tool’.